


Halfway

by Blink23



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bisexual Steve Harrington, Cold War, Domestic Violence, East Berlin, Even while brainwashed Billy loves Steve, Gay Billy Hargrove, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 03:41:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19844830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blink23/pseuds/Blink23
Summary: Steve does his rich boy best to runaway from his problems in Europe.Wilhelm Becker just wants to know what the dreams that have plagued him since he was just a number stuck in a Russian bunker mean.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as something that was supposed to be Winter Solider-esque, but quickly devolved into something much, much more inspired by the German language series _Deutschland '83,_ (which I fully encourage all of you to watch by the way, especially with the '80's setting, the gay, and the great writing.)
> 
> History is definitely played fast and loose with this, and I doubt Billy would be able to get away with this much in East Berlin or even be allowed there in the first place, but eh, there's a reason this is fiction.
> 
> Second part is (mostly) done, I just needed to break it up this way. Also I'll put more info about the historical parts of this who thing in the second part, since it would ruin elements of the ending to have it now.

пятнадцать doesn’t tell them about the dreams.

He used to, when they were just glimpses; a dark haired girl with a bloody nose, an animal that was all teeth; a little redhead laughing as a dark skinned boy spun her around to a song he doesn’t know. Cigarettes, rocky road, thick pasta with meat sauce ( _“this is my nonna’s recipe, dude. If you don’t like it we’ll never work out.” eyeroll. “Good thing I like everything you cook, huh pretty boy?”_ )

Mind wipes leave him tired, sore everywhere, and unable to understand when they speak to him outside of English. Last time it took him a full week to get his Russian back, and Popov had to speak to him in Polish. It sucks, even though he’s only following their orders.

And the worst bit is sometimes they just don’t work, his brain too much for the machine, and all it does is lead him to suspect they’re less dreams, and more memories.

Then he starts dreaming of the boy.

The boy, wet, in a pool, his chin propped on his arms at the edge, smiling. Wearing some sort of sailor uniform, wearing dark glasses, his hand on пятнадцать’s knee. Little freckles that he thinks he used to kiss. The smell of smoke in his hair, how he looked wearing a too big denim jacket that didn’t belong to him but did, the sleeves rolled up over a soft grey sweater. Sleep soft and naked in bed, his skin warm, his thigh across his hips, head on his chest.

Something hot and panicky coils in his stomach at the thought of losing his boy (because he has to be his, he doesn’t know what he’d do if he wasn’t) so he tells them the dreams have stopped. Lets them think the mind wipes are working. He keeps brown eyes for himself.

Steve feels oddly serene as he sits in the passenger seat of his car, his eyes watching the highway. For the first time since last summer he feels a sense of calm when his life is anything but.

What he and Billy had was always intense, always something beyond the normal teen romance. Maybe it was because they were both guys, or maybe it was because of how fucked up Hawkins was, but they had both fallen hard, and were determined that this was it for them. They had all these plans; plans to save as much cash as they could, use Steve’s trust to escape, Chicago or California or Italy or _Mars_ , it didn’t matter.

Now, it really doesn’t matter. His boyfriend is dead.

Steve knows that he’s going to end up like his father, bitter and angry and married to an appropriate girl his parents basically pick out. He knows he’ll resent her because she’s not who he really wants and there’s nothing he can do about it, and whatever kids they have he won’t care about. Billy was it for him, and he knows, deep in his bones, that he doesn’t give a shit when it comes to finding someone or moving on, but he will anyway because it’s expected.

“You sure you want to do this?” Robin asks, gripping the BMW’s wheel tight as they idle in departures. He nods, and she leans over to hug him. He’s the only one he told, So she could drive him, and then take his car home. Dustin and the kids would’ve freaked, and he has no doubt he would’ve stayed just for them.

“I love you shithead,” she says, her eyes a little glassy, “don’t die on me over there.”

“Love you too,” He smiles, hopping out of the car and grabbing the hiking backpack she made him buy, so he’d ‘fit in with all the other rich asshole trust fund kids’ like Robin claimed, “I‘ll see you in a few months.”

He smiles as he walks up to the Information desk at O’Hare, asking what the next flights out of the country are.

“We think you’d do better here.”

It’s what the Russian official they sent with him tells him, the plane bumping along a runaway somewhere on the GDR’s border to get to their terminal. He’s shown proficiency in some areas, but not others. Languages, fighting, light mind reading, all his bread and butter, but he’s shit a telepathy and using anything on people out of his eyesight. Whatever they had done for him had made him better, but not in the ways needed. He’s useful, just not for the program. Stasi has something cooked up for him.

Popov had been furious to lose him. All because they couldn’t see his real potential, they decided to hand him off to the _Germans_ of all people.

They take a train to the city, and he doesn’t ask questions, just watches as it creeps closer, drab and grey, following the Russian official when they arrive at Berlin Ostbahnhof. There’s a car waiting, and his new handler - Speiler - ushers him in. The Russian doesn’t come with.

Speiler is an excitable man who talks with his hands too much. He explains their plans for him, which basically amount to him living on his own in Berlin, with him being called on for his _services_ via a complicated post drop scenario and coded messages. They think it’ll be easier to hide him this way, in plain sight. He talks about pay, and his apartment they’ve found close to the U-bahn, the job front with one of their political parties they have for him.

Пятнадцать thinks it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard, but he doesn’t say shit. Anything to get him out of a cell and into the world is okay. Plus, it not like he doesn’t know they’ll be bugging his apartment and having someone tail him unless he’s on a mission.

“You need a name,” he says, finally, “something German, of course, but we can’t just call you _fünfzehn_.”

It’s the first time he’s been asked for his opinion since he woke up and didn’t know who he was or how he ended up in a cell.

He thinks of soft hands that don’t hurt, brown eyes and freckles. In the back of his head he can almost hear the laughter of children, feel the sun on his skin, taste a sweet, sticky something on his mouth, pressed there from someone else’s lips. The redhead girl, yelling, but not really angry.

_“William Michael Hargrove, don’t think I won’t kick your ass if you even think of dumping me in that pool! I’ve got my walkman, you asshole!”_

“Wilhelm,” he says, and Speiler smiles.

Steve lands in Dublin and finds a pub before he finds a place to say, getting drunk as his first order of business. He fucks a redheaded girl with an accent so thick he can barely understand it, and she writes her number on a scrap of paper he tosses as soon as he leaves her apartment. The next three days follow the same path, getting drunk and fucking random women and men, until a van bomb goes off somewhere in Belfast and there’s a police crackdown, and he gets on a flight to Lisbon.

They told him the first kill would be hard. To Wilhelm it’s surprisingly easy.

When he’s burying the body of the American spy they sent him to get rid of in the woods just outside Leipzig, tired, sore from the struggle, he goes through the man’s wallet. He pockets the forty Forum Checks he finds that this guy shouldn’t have (Forum Checks are only for Germans, are Americans that stupid?), and stares at the driver's license. His name (or, more than likely, his alternative identity provided by the CIA) was Neil Michealson. He was from San Diego.

 _‘Respect and Responsibility,’_ a male voice that isn’t his own whispers in his mind, _‘why the fuck can’t you seem to understand what that means, you stupid faggot?’_

Wilhelm shivers, uncomfortable. He burns the license instead of keeping it like he's supposed to.

Paris is pretty, but filthy and cold, and Steve finds that he both loves it and doesn’t get the big deal at the same time.

He rolls out of his hostel bed around noon, that second day, and sits by the Seine and reads. At one point he gets up and gets a crepe from one of the numerous walk up places, going back to the riverwalk to people watch. He thinks about what Billy would think, watching overly fashionable men wander, the women thin and gorgeous.

It’s not until two men walk by unashamedly holding hands that he gets up, approaches to ask about bars and clubs he can go to.

He meets a pretty blond named Jan at the club they suggest, and follows him to Brussels five days later.

He’s relatively free compared to Moscow, he finds. It seems they do really want him to blend in, to appear normal.

He gets a paycheck, an apartment, a few passports for when he feels like weekending in Budapest or Prague. Enough hard currency for a carton of Marlboro Reds once every two weeks, after he asks. He's allowed to go to pubs, to the Kino, to sit out in the sunshine at a cafe and eat cake while reading a book.

He dreams of his boy without fear of it being taken away.

Steve stays put in Brussels for a two weeks before him and Jan get into a fight and he gives Steve a black eye. Steve packs his shit while Jan cries about how sorry he is and he didn’t mean it but Steve just made him mad, like it's Steve's fault. He pauses only to take deep breaths, thinking of Billy's hands holding his face, how he had whispered in the dark about how sorry he was, how he'd never do it again, and Steve knew he wouldn't.

Jan isn't Billy. Steve knows he would do it again.

He gets to Brussels-Midi in the middle of the night. He takes the next train he can find, and is in Amsterdam by morning.

Moritz is tall and lean with dark floppy hair and green eyes and an obnoxious laugh. He’s works at Billy’s nearest Intershop while studying engineering. He got the job because a friend of his is Stasi, though he shouldn’t know that. He’s actually from Erfurt, where his asshole violent widower father lives.

It’s easy to fluster him. To make him desperate for Wilhelm’s attention.

When Wilhelm fucks him for the first time, it’s from behind with his eyes closed, his mind wandering. Moritz whines ‘ja, ja, ja,’ so loudly he shoves his face into the pillow to shut him up and not ruin the illusion.

Steve calls his mother from Copenhagen. She’s pissed at him for his ‘little stunt’ of leaving the country for all of five minutes before she proceeds to talk about herself and his father for most of the remaining twenty-five minutes of his phone card. She doesn’t even ask how he is.

Before she hangs up, though, she insists he goes back to Italy.

“For the love of god, please get a flight to Florence. Use the credit card if you have to. Your Zia Sofia won’t leave me alone about you going all the way to Europe and not visiting her.”

It gets easier. It really does.

Stasi stops tailing him almost completely, though he knows his apartment his still bugged. He had removed enough of them as to not be suspicious. He can only be listened in on in the living room and kitchen now, his bedroom a place to be alone. He gets to know his neighbors. Frau and Herr Hermann who live on the ground floor grow a garden and sell their fruit and veg illegally, though he never says anything and makes it a point to ask his Speiler that nothing is done about it. He helps Frau Ballack - Sabine, she insists on being called - next door with little repairs to her shabby two bedroom, always lying about how much they cost, knowing he can ask for more money from Spieler while she can barely feed her and her six year old daughter after her husband ran off to the west and divorced her when she refused to go with him.

He makes friends. Some are the guys who he meets at his local on friedrichstraße. Some are Moritz’s friends from university. He drinks and smokes and ignores their quiet suspicions that he doesn’t just do administrative work for LDPD.

Sometimes, though, he wakes up from a vivid dream so disoriented and knowing he isn’t himself - he’s Billy, not Wilhelm, not пятнадцать - that it takes him hours to calm down. In the hours after he jolts awake, he doesn’t belong anywhere but California, or maybe Indiana. Moritz in his bed disgusts him, because he doesn’t belong to him, but to his boy, the one he teases by calling princess, the one whose name is forever out of reach, unlike his sister - Max, her name is Maxine Elizebeth, and Billy can still feel the sting from the slap to his chest from the only time he ever caller her that - and Billy or Wilhelm or whoever the fuck he’s supposed to be feels like he’s going to shake apart.

The fourth time it happens, he decides he can't live like this. 

That morning, he slips his mask back on, and Wilhelm gets up, gets ready, and goes to the office, even though he doesn't have to be there.

Instead of going to Speiler, or one of the other officers, though, he makes his way to the documents department, down the corridor, and over to the private office where he knows the man that is their forger works.

San Gimignano is gorgeous and as perfect as he remembers from his childhood visits.

No one in his immediate family is left since his Nonno died, but his sister, Steve's Zia Sofia, and her family are thrilled to have him around. He hangs around the house and the olive fields, eats everything his Aunt puts in front of his too skinny frame, and sleeps deeper than he has since he got involved with the upside down. He goes to museums, and the old town, and takes the train to Florence to spend a few nights getting high and drinking with his cousin and her husband. It’s only after four weeks he starts to feel the itch of being confined, of needing a distraction.

His Zia Sofia sighs when he brings it up, talking about going north to Zurich.

“I don’t know exactly what you’re running from, Mimmo,” his Zia says sadly, “But you need to face it, or you’re going to lose yourself.”

“I have zero idea what you're talking about,” Steve shrugs, the Italian clumsy in his mouth with the lie, and she pets his hair.

“I just don’t want you to wake up thirty years from now knowing you could’ve been happy but couldn’t bring yourself to be.”

“I am happy.”

She shakes her head, “I don’t think even you believe that, Tesoro.”

That night he sits in the little guest bedroom and thinks about the last few years and her words and cries, his hands over his mouth to muffle his sobs. He lets it all out, whimpering into a patchwork quilt his great grandmother made, halfway around the world from where Billy is supposed to be six feet underground but isn’t since the monster that destroyed him got his body too. Got his face and those eyes and those lips and that metal that hung around neck, destroyed the only thing that made Steve happy so all he has left is a few polaroids and the denim jacket at the bottom of his bag.

It’s the first time he’s let himself cry over what he’s lost. It doesn't help.


	2. Chapter 2

Six months to the day he left out of O'Hare for his trip, Steve wakes up in West Berlin slightly hungover, wondering if he really wanted to deal with border guards and all the bullshit of Checkpoint Charlie just to say he had been to the East.

On the opposite side of the Wall, Wilhelm Becker is finally making his way home from a job in Dresden, taking care of some dumbass working for the French. It had been messy, and he had been left with a shallow knife wound in the stomach, something that thankfully didn't even require stitches. Despite the stiffness in his bones and the dirt under his nails from getting rid of the body, he's wide awake thanks to his nap on the train.

He'd dreamed of his boy again.

_“I’ve been waiting to meet this King Steve everybody’s been telling me so much about.”_

His name was Steve.

For over a year he’d been haunting him, since the first days in that bunker in Moscow, and finally he had a name.

And it’s _Steve_ , of all things.

He almost laughs, once he’s in the shower cubical of his tiny bathroom. The whole thing feels absurd. He doesn’t really remember the dream - it’s all disjointed, flashes of light and sound - but it’s enough.

His pretty boy is named Steve.

Steve talks to the people at the front desk of his hotel and they explain that it’s less of a hassle to get into the east with a car, especially since his plan includes a daytrip to Dresden. They explain all about _Reisebüro_ and how it was easier to get a day pass and just extend it with the police once you get there.

He ends up renting a BMW - his BMW, funnily enough, same year and model as back home but black - for cheap and making his way through the checkpoint without much trouble.

He parks, and decides to wander for awhile.

Mortiz demands lunch after he had to cancel their date the day before, and he meets him at their usual café. He squeezes his wrist hello, the only affection they’ll allow themselves in public, and they sit, ordering their usual. Moritz immediately starts filling him in on the gossip he missed yesterday - apparently he went out with some of their friends instead of them having their date - as Wilhelm eats.

"You're not even listening to me, are you?" he whines, and Wilhelm looks at him. Usually he wouldn't be annoyed, but he's tired and his mind his still fresh with Steve, _his_ Steve. Still, it's not fair to take it out on him, and he looks at his boyfriend, giving him the eyes the way he likes.

"I always pay attention to you, baby."

Moritz flushes prettily, squeezing his thigh under the table.

Someone enters, the door behind Wilhelm snapping close breaking the moment, and they both go back to their plates. 

Steve sits at an empty two top, nervously picking at his fingers. He always feels a bit weird eating alone, especially in countries he doesn’t speak the language and the menu isn’t in English. Plus, this is East Berlin, and yeah, he's not all that smart, but he knows about food shortages and limited options and all the shit they talk about on the news. He doesn't want to order something and the not eat it like a dickhead.

A sweet faced older waitress comes out and says something to him in german, and all he can do is mumble out a confused noise from the back of his throat.

The woman must understand his dilemma, because she smiles.

“Can I help you?” She asks in slightly broken English, and when he relaxes she just laughs.

“I don’t know German outside of the most basic of basics,” he admits, feeling his face grow hot, “so I literally have no idea what this is.”

She laughs again, harder this time. She asks him a few questions, mostly about what he likes and doesn’t, and helps him pick out something on the menu before turning back to the counter and kitchen. She brings him coffee, and he sips it slow, trying not to make a face (he had known it wasn’t going to be that good, but he didn’t expect it to be awful) and looks around the almost empty café.

There’s a couple of guys in the corner sitting close, talking, though he can only see the back of one of them. He watches as the one with dark hair throws his head back and laughs, resting his hand on the blond’s knee and squeezing, leaving it there. It makes his eyebrows raise.

The sweet faced woman yells something at them from behind the counter, making them both giggle. 

Then the blond turns to respond to her, and Steve is out of his seat in an instant. He doesn’t know how to breathe in that moment because despite the short hair and the scar at his eyebrow that’s - it’s-

“Billy.”

Wilhelm looks up, his eyes widening when he sees him. They stare at each other, unsure what to say.

“Who is this?” Moritz asks, his eyes narrowing, hand still on his thigh, “Wilhelm?”

Wilhelm - Billy, because that’s his name, William Michael Hargrove, before he was Wilhelm, before he was пятнадцать - can’t do anything but stare at his boy. Steve's eyes are welling up, his breath coming in short pants. Panicked. Relieved. Confused. Terrified he’s imagining things.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I-”

“How are you here?”

“It’s complicated,” Billy shakes his head, and puts an artificial smile on, “but that should really be for later-“

“Later? You’re fucking with me right? If you think I’m going to leave without-”

“Ears,” he says, still smiling, still ignoring Moritz’s questions, knowing full well he doesn’t know English, “are everywhere.”

He goes stiff. Pissed off. Leans into Billy’s space, “You sure about that, Baby?”

He tries not to respond to the endearment he’s only heard in his dreams.

Memories. _He knew they were memories._ Even in Moscow, even when they told him he was dreaming, then used that fucking machine on him. Everything clicks together in an instant, giving him a headrush.

Why hadn’t he tried harder to get to this boy?

“конечно,” he says, perfectly accented with a hint of Muscovite, and Steve’s looks horrified.

Next to him, Moritz stiffens. His hand slides from his thigh.

Billy continues to ignore him. Instead he scribbles down on a napkin what Steve needs to know.

“My address,” he says, this time in Italian, and Steve’s eyes widen comically, “Meet me there at four. I’ll explain.”

Steve reads the note ( _COME AT THREE INSTEAD - BRING YOUR THINGS - DON’T BE SUSPICIOUS - WE HAVE TO LEAVE._ ) before nodding, going back to his table to sit. Billy starts to gather his things, finally glancing at Moritz.

“You need to come with me.”

Mortiz follows in a daze, watches as he sets too many Marks down for their food, not caring that it's rude, and follows him home to his apartment. He doesn't even have the door closed before he's asking.

“You’re not-- You don’t-”

Billy leads him to the bedroom, where he knows their voices can’t be picked up by the microphones in his living room.

Billy cups his cheek, looking into his eyes. They’re brimming with tears.

“If you have any brains, you’d forget me. Right now. This is going to get bad before it gets better. They’re going to look for me, and you’ll be first on the list. They know who you are, and what we were. Lie. Say we weren’t that serious. Please.”

Moritz looks like he wants to argue, but swallows it down. He nods, and then kisses Billy once, on the mouth. He collects his things, and leaves.

Billy waits in agony for Steve. Packs what he needs - a few sets of his more trendy, western clothes the Stasi provided when he needs to play a tourist for the job, a few small knick knacks he’s attached to, some hard currency - in a rucksack. He knocks on Sabine’s door - little Sara answers - and asks if she wouldn’t mind taking all the food in his apartment, since he has to make a work trip last minute and doesn’t want it to go to waste. Sara helps him, and he slips her the rest of his Ostmarks, nearly a hundred of them, and makes her promise she’ll give them to her mom when he’s gone. Then he just waits until he hears a knock, takes his bag, and locks the door behind him.

Billy’ lets out a relieved little sigh at seeing Steve rented a car before climbing in. He doesn’t talk as he sits next to him, giving directions to a nondescript pre-war apartment block out in Weißensee. 

“Bring your bag,” Billy says, gesturing the hiking backpack in the backseat, “if anyone asks don’t say shit. I’ll tell them you’re a Polish student looking for an apartment.”

He leads Steve to the third floor walk up, unlocking the door with a hand on his lower back to calm the nerves he can feel rolling off him. 

It’s just a studio apartment. Sparsely furnished, but just enough to be believably lived in.

“Billy, what are we…?”

Billy kisses him.

Steve melts into him, soft and sweet; just like every kiss he ever remembered and convinced himself wasn’t real so he wouldn't go insane.

When he pulls away, he moves to the corner of the room, gets to work prying up one of the floorboards.

“They don’t know about this place,” He says, “if they did it would’ve been brought up. They thought I was so brainwashed by the Russians to be this good little murder machine that by the time I actually settled they were monitoring me less than most other Germans. This is a place they wouldn’t go apeshit over not being bugged, and I never use the phone, so here we are.” 

He finally gets it, yanking out a sizable Spreewald jar.

“The guy who does all our passports has some… unsavory habits, when it comes to men,” he says to Steve, “Or at least that’s what he thinks. I don’t think getting railed by a guy while high on coke he used GDR funds to procure is all that bad…”

He shakes the jar out. About huge wad of Deutsches Marks plops out, as well as two passports; one American, the other Australian, and an American social security card and birth certificate. 

“...But it got me some pretty good blackmail material.”

He can feel Steve’s confusion at the Australian one without even attempting to skim his thoughts.

“I’ll have you know,” He says, his Austrailan accent near perfect, “That I’m quiet good that all that shite. The ruskies did figure out how to make me learn accents and languages fast. I speak eight now, and can figure out most accents in a few minutes.”

“How…?”

Billy taps his temple.

“You’re talking to пятнадцать, pretty boy. My shit isn’t as good as the girl’s, though. Whatever they did mostly just heightened what I already had and made me a bit of an empath thanks to the demon fuck that crawled inside me. Mind readings decent too, but I can’t do deep dives or anything. Mostly can just tell what people want for lunch or if they forgot to take the garbage out or if they’re spying for NATO.”

To Billy’s surprise, Steve just laughs.

“Jesus, El’s going to be jealous. Her's still aren’t back.”

“Huh,” Billy frowns, “I wonder if this makes us siblings.”

“She’ll love that, I’m sure. Max too. That would practically make them sisters.”

Billy stiffens.

“How is she?”

“Bad, for awhile. Better now that Neil’s gone.”

The name Neil makes his gut turn. He doesn’t know why, but he’s sure he’ll figure it out eventually and doesn’t have the time to investigate further at this moment. 

Steve notices the confusion, though, and frowns. "Do you not know who Neil is?" 

"It's... I'm still mostly bits and pieces, to be honest. I know some things, but others - I'm guessing the shittier things - I've been blocking out. I'm still not sure who Billy Hargrove is, honestly. But I know I'm supposed to be him." 

“Why do you have all this if you weren't sure?”

Billy takes a shaky breath.

“I have, almost since the moment I woke up in Moscow, been dreaming of people I didn't know, and a life I wasn't a part of,” He says, “Sometimes it was stupid things, sometimes not. But they always, always told me it was just dreams. Then they would try to wipe my mind of it. But it never went away. I’d always loop back to you, or one of the kids. Always good things.

“Once I came here, it got worse. I didn’t know what was real or not. I started to realize if they ever figured it out, whether they thought I was crazy or knew I was remembering, they’d try to take me away and make me Wilhelm permanently. I couldn’t do that, Steve. I’d have to run. 

"So I got our documents department to use their connections to do me two favors: first, make me the Australian passport, so I could leave without drawing attention if I had to, and second, bring Billy Hargrove back from the dead. And here we are.”

“Baby…”

“My Austrailian one needs an entry stamp,” he explains, moving into the tiny kitchenette. He tugs the refrigerator away from the wall, retrieving another bundle of cash, this time Austrailian dollars, an ink pot, and a few rubber stamps, “I have a West Berlin student visa, so all I need is an entry, and for them to provide an exit. I never go through friedrichstraße so they shouldn’t recognize me. How long are you here for?”

“Just the day pass. I hadn’t tried to extend it yet.”

“Good, then I won’t need to fake the _Aufenthaltsberechtigung._ That's kind of a bitch to do.”

He stamps it at the kitchen counter the way he’s meant to; sloppy, but still legible, like some bored low level guard did it.

They both stand, shoulder to shoulder, and stare at it as it dries, feeling overwhelmed at what it means.

Steve moves back to the bed and digs around in his backpack, before tossing him a denim jacket. His denim jacket.

If he thinks really hard, he can vaguely remember giving it to Steve. The closest thing to a promise they had. The only thing safe for them to have, in smalltown Indiana.

Billy slips it on with shaky fingers.

“Billy?”

“Yeah Princess?”

Steve holds out his hand.

“Let's go home.”

Billy takes it, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hard Currency is the generalized term for any currency that came from a capitalist country, whether that be West German Deutsche marks or US dollars or British pounds.
> 
> Intershops were stores (usually attached to hotels, U-bahn (subway) stations, autobahn pitstops, and train stations) that sold western goods like cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, perfume, food, records and tapes, etc. duty free. They were set up mostly for tourists and foreigners who lived in the East while working to use. You could only buy with hard currency, which was illegal for East Germans to have unless it was a gift from family in the west or they had been paid in it for work done in the West. By the 80’s, though, you could get things called Forum Checks, which were basically converted Ostmarks (east german currency) that could be used to buy stuff at Intershops. Blackmarket was also thriving at that point, if you had the money for it.
> 
> The LDPD (Liberal-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands) was a political party of East Germany. After the fall of the wall it merged with the FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei) which is Germany’s center-right party.
> 
> Reisebüro was the GDR’s tourist bureau. They’re the ones that handled everything when you were a westerner visiting the GDR/USSR or a GDR resident trying to visit another communist country. They had prepackaged tours for westerners that would handle everything: currency exchange, hotel bookings, transport, etc. Good idea if you were doing extensive traveling - they could book you a complete two week trip that included Berlin, Prague, Krakow, and Budapest, for example, which would’ve been a headache any other way - but what Steve does here, with entering on a day pass and planning to extend it to a 72-hour visa, is pretty much what everyone did if they were just visiting East Berlin, because it eliminated the bureaucratic bullshit. Aufenthaltsberechtigung was basically just registering you with the police of whatever areas you intended to visit, and was usually handled by filling out paperwork at your hotel on check in. funnily enough you still do this when you visit Germany, though now it's digital and you don't need to do anything but fill out a sheet with your passport number, name and home address.
> 
> Spreewald were the GDR's state run pickle company. They still exist, they're just privately owned now.


End file.
